Birmingham narrows visual preferences but defers building program for proposed community and senior center

Newman Smith Architecture showed Birmingham City Commission members visual-preference results and a draft space program Feb. 10 as part of early design work for a proposed Birmingham Community and Senior Center on East Lincoln.

The presentation combined an interactive community word-cloud and image-based choices with a room-by-room “programming exercise” meant to test how many multiuse rooms, fitness spaces and pool hours the building would need. Jim Stock, principal at Newman Smith Architecture, guided commissioners and the public through materials, entry forms, building forms and a schedule-based analysis of how existing providers expect to use shared space.

The exercise produced a program that the architects summarized as about 38,003 square feet of net space and roughly 49,090 square feet gross after circulation and support spaces were added — at the upper end of the commission’s previously stated planning range of 44,500 to 49,000 square feet. The draft calls for a 7,200-square-foot gym (sized for a full basketball court and three pickleball courts), a 5,300-square-foot five-lane pool, six multipurpose rooms of varying sizes, shared administrative offices for Next and the YMCA and a roughly 1,000-square-foot kitchen for community use and Meals on Wheels prep.

Why it matters: the program will determine project cost, parking needs and the building’s footprint on a constrained 1.4-acre site. Commissioners repeatedly pressed architects and user groups for evidence that the projected hours and room counts are accurate, and for options to reduce square footage without undercutting core services.

Survey and design takeaways - Visual-preference survey: participants favored a palette that included concrete/steel, brick and glazed window-wall systems; among entry styles, exposed structural-steel overhangs and large, welcoming covered entries polled strongly. Stock said the crowd-sourced priorities reinforced the committee’s directional goals to balance downtown context with residential scale. - Program rationale: Newman Smith and the project team mapped weekly class schedules supplied by Next and the YMCA against room sizes and occupancies to size multipurpose rooms and the pool schedule. The draft showed about 428 existing program hours between the two organizations and an additional 67 prospective hours if new capacity is available in the center.

Commission and stakeholder concerns Commissioner Anthony Long said the neighborhood context shaped his preferences: “My responses at least were that we’re in a residential area,” he said, noting that some more dramatic contemporary options would be better suited to an urban downtown location. Commissioner Hay questioned long-term maintenance costs, saying timber is “popular right now, but … maintenance on timber … is expensive” and that durability should guide material choices.

Several commissioners and multiple public speakers urged more data and independent validation before advancing to floor plans. Resident David Levinson told the commission he is “disappointed” about earlier site decisions and asked for a fresh look at alternate options, while other residents raised concerns about parking, light pollution and operating cost assumptions.

Next steps and commission direction Rather than adopt the draft program, commissioners asked staff and the city’s owner’s representative to validate the hourly-program inputs and to explore ways to reduce the program’s footprint without eliminating core services. The commission did approve updated vision and goals for the project (see separate action), but it did not approve the draft building program; staff and the architect were instructed to return with a reworked program and independent programming validation. The commission also requested presentations from both the YMCA and Next about their program models and utilization as part of the next review cycle.

What remains open: the commission did not change the agreed planning range (44,500–49,000 gross square feet) but asked the project team to try to reach the lower end, to provide occupancy validation (attendance per class), and to re-run the program with any agreed reductions. A construction manager and cost consultant are expected to provide updated cost estimates in a later phase.